The Siren's Touch (17 page)

But how had they found him?

Sonya began to shudder, crying. “I can hear them, Dmitri. My parents are calling to me.” She plugged her ghost ears with her fingers but thrashed her head, seeming to find no relief.

“Hands up, Lisko. Where did she go?” asked the dumb one.

Dmitri didn’t bother with his hands. Gregor would kill these fools if they even grazed him. The smart one, at least for a thug, turned his gun up and away from Dmitri. “Just turn her over. We won’t hurt you. Orders are to only take out the girl.”

Hovering over the bed, Sonya trembled. The air vibrated with her anger. “Your uncle is trying to kill me? Again?”

He bobbed his head once in answer and then turned to Thug and Thugger. “What girl?”

Thug frowned at the bed, where Sonya’s clothes lay in an artful pile, as if their wearer had simply vanished. His astonished expression was priceless, the picture of pure idiocy. She sniffed and then giggled, her laughter seeming to calm her shakes. God, he loved she could laugh at a time like this. But he had to keep a straight face.

Thugger tilted his head toward the bed. “The one who was wearing those.”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.” Dmitri let himself smile. It was just too good. Of course, they had seen Sonya and even sent along a picture of her to Gregor, and now Dmitri was denying her very existence. If he were in their shoes, he would blow a gasket. But he wasn’t, so it was bordering on hilarious, as were their gaping expressions. Rarely, if ever, had he seen thugs so confused.

“It does seem like someone left her clothes here. You think she’s hiding under the bed?”

Thugger dropped to his knees, and Dmitri kicked him in the face. He toppled over, blood pouring from his split lip. Thug re-aimed his gun, now from a short four feet away. Dmitri could easily persuade them to run off with their puzzled tails between their legs. But there was no fun in that.

“Wait. Do you see that? She’s right there.” He pointed at Sonya and Thug’s eyes flicked off Dmitri for just long enough. His kick sent the man’s gun flying, and seconds later, he had the man by the wrist, Thug’s arm bent at a wrong angle behind him.

Thugger had trained his gun at Dmitri during the scuffle. “Let him go, or I’ll shoot.”

“Sure thing. And then you two run off and tell my uncle what happened.” He let go of the man with a shove. “Just go. And if I see either of you again, you’re dead.”

The smart one narrowed his eyes. “Gregor said the same thing if we fail.”

Dmitri rubbed his palm over his head. “I’ll call him off. Just get the hell out of here before security shows up. None of us need that.”

When they turned their back on him to leave, he stuffed Sonya’s clothes in his pack, along with the new towel. Scanning the walls, he found a door camouflaged between shelves, marked only by an emergency exit sign—good, it would lead outside, hopefully before security showed up.

She was holding steady, no longer giggling, but also not pulsing with a rusalka’s righteous fury.

“Come on.”

Outside, the day had turned completely gray. All of downtown was now swallowed up by the bank of fog. The crowded sidewalk seemed to agitate Sonya. She cried out twice when people walked through her.

He pressed against the brick wall of a church so she could get out of the foot traffic. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“Loosey-goosey.” She shuddered. “I hate it.”

He still had no idea what that meant, but it had something to do with the possibility of going all psycho ghost. “Can you float higher, above my head?”

“Okay.”

“See that park?” He pointed a half a block up and across the street.

She nodded.

“Let’s go there. You can find some space, and I’ll give Gregor a call.”

He marched toward the green space. Over his head, the air hummed with an energy that raised the hair on his neck. He glanced up, surprised to see Sonya flickering, thinner and more translucent than before. They reached the grassy clearing, surrounded by trees and modern buildings on all sides. A fountain roared, sending a cascade of water ten meters wide into a pool. It seemed to capture her attention, and she swished over, extending her shimmering finger into the powerful stream of water.

“Sonya, look, I’ll just sit over there on that bench and give Gregor a call.” He could speak privately to his uncle. His words would be drowned out by the sound of rushing water, but he’d still keep her in sight. After seeing that bullet fly through her only seconds after she’d gone ghost, he didn’t want to let her out of his sight ever again.

Gregor answered on the first ring. “Lisko.”

“You owe me an explanation.”

“The feeling is mutual. You run off like this mission is the most important thing in the world, then abandon your target to flounce around San Francisco with a girl. I need you here.”

“Nice try. But I know your tricks. Tell me about Sonya.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You hire those idiots to kill her and pretend she’s just a girl?”

“Isn’t she?”

Dmitri had to laugh. Gregor was playing the same exact routine he’d just fed the thugs. “Let me be clear. Anything happens to her and I’m never coming home. Now tell me about the goddamn teapot.”

His uncle sighed. “Son, it’s such a long story, and I will tell you all of it, if you’ll just come home.”

Dmitri had never heard his uncle plead before. His heart seized up at the desperation, and he pounded his fist into his chest, forcing himself to breathe again.

“What about Makar?”

“Forget about him. We’ll let it go. Maybe we should have a long time ago.”

Let it go? A lifetime of hatred. The man responsible for all his problems. Nothing about that added up.

Unless Makar knew the answers to Dmitri’s questions.

Holy hell. Just one more fucking cover-up.

Which meant he had to talk to the man he’d been raised to kill.

“Did you murder the Truss family?”

The silence bounced through wireless towers across half the world, and it broke Dmitri’s heart. “Did you?”

“No.”

He wanted there to be another explanation, longed to believe his uncle—but he didn’t. Not even a little. “I’m not coming home until I get to the bottom of this. Whether it’s with your help or Makar’s, or some other way.”

Gregor cleared his throat, the sound crackling over the line. “I’m sick, Dima. I might not have that long.”

Dmitri ran his hand over his head, kneading the muscles of his neck. “That’s a low one, Uncle, even for you.”

Dmitri ended the call.

Gregor’s heart, lethargic with sedatives, had been jolted into a reluctant gallop. Dima’s questions about the Truss family had fallen like cascading boulders into the pain-delirious sea of his thoughts. His nephew knew too much, and even worse, refused to believe Gregor was sick.

Or maybe the worst part was what Demchak had reported about the girl. “Disappeared, vanished—poof. Like some kind of magic shit. Like a fucking ghost.”

Gregor didn’t believe in ghosts, but he sure as hell knew that woman in the photo was the one who’d died in a nameless tributary of the Dnieper River almost fifty years ago, and she’d wormed her way into Dmitri’s already troubled conscience. Now it seemed inevitable—he would die alone, knowing everything he’d worked for would be lost.

He was more than half dead, but he wasn’t ready to give up, which meant he needed some advice.

Hours later, his driver dropped him off in front of the stately and towering Budnyok Uryadu, which housed all the offices of the prime minister and his cabinet. At the early hour, few lights illuminated windows between the Corinthian columns of its curving façade.

The short walk to the entrance was distance enough to give him pause. He gathered up his strength and took the first excruciating step. The pain shot up his spine and stole his breath. He pressed his cane into the sidewalk and tried to summon up the energy to take another. Sergei Hritz, Minister of Defense, appeared at his side like a phantom in a dark suit. Gregor jumped, teetering until his cane found new purchase.

“Old friend.” Sergei extended his hand. His government security detail kept a respectable distance.

Gregor nodded at them. Those impassive intelligence types were his primary recruiting pool for the private security side of Lisko Enterprises. He put his foot down cautiously, but a searing pain shot from his hip up his spine, turning his reply into a guttural grunt.

“That bad?”

Gregor set his teeth and shook his head, denying the obvious answer. Aside from that tiresome estate lawyer, Sergei alone knew the extent of Gregor’s cancer.

“Sit here. No need to walk up all those stairs.” Ten years older than Gregor, Sergei was the picture of health. His suit fit his slim shoulders as though he played tennis every morning.

Gregor wanted to refuse the kindness, wanted to hit something with his cane. Instead, he collapsed onto the marble bench.

“Where’s Dmitri?”

Even though Gregor had sought out Sergei’s advice, he couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth. “He’s negotiating a deal for me in California. Buying the latest technology in windmills.”

Sergei chuckled. “The boy will come back with that Silicon Valley folded up in his suitcase. You’ve done well with him. I admit I had my doubts—”

Gregor waved his hand, as if anyone would have been a fool to doubt Dmitri, when in fact it was the very likelihood of misjudging him that made him such an asset.

Sergei rubbed his chin. “Do you remember the first time he sat in on a meeting with that ballbreaker, Yulia something or other? She was the health minister for all of three months two prime ministers back.”

“How could I forget? She interrupted my introduction of him to start the meeting, as if he were my footman.”

“Precisely. And then he bent her over a barrel with that argument about victims of domestic violence needing better security in shelters and clinics. Won you a deep five-year contract.”

Filled with unjustifiable fatherly warmth, Gregor smiled. “On the way out, she slipped him her private phone number.”

“You’re kidding.” Sergei slapped his knee. “She was a peach. Probably a spitfire in the sack. Did he call her?”

“Of course not. I told him to write it on the men’s room wall in one of those nightclubs he frequents.”

“Did he?”

“No, he tore it up in front of me, saying those unsuspecting men didn’t deserve the likes of her.” A lump caught in Gregor’s throat at the memory. The two of them had laughed so hard tears had fallen down their faces. And now, Dmitri was so angry he wouldn’t even believe the truth, about the cancer, or about who had killed the Truss family.

A dizzying burst of pain erupted like hot lava through Gregor’s leg, causing his brain to spin inside his skull. He planted his hands on the bench and took a deep breath.

“Why the hell did you send him to California now?”

“I didn’t. He went to find Boris Makar.”

Sergei leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Well, I’ll be damned. Makar? After all these years. Remind me never to get on the bad side of a Lisko.”

“I tried to call him off.” Gregor gave Sergei a moment to piece things together.

“Does he know about the cover up?”

“He does now.” Gregor tapped the cane on the sidewalk. His throbbing bones cried out for more pills, but he’d just had some, hadn’t he?

“Why should that matter?” Sergei asked, his eyebrows pulled together. “Dmitri’s not exactly Gandhi.”

“Four innocent people were killed, Sergei. Dmitri may not be nice, but he doesn’t make messes like that one. And I don’t blame him. I learned my lesson after just the one.”

“So you’re going to slink off with your tail between your legs? You’re not dead yet. Fight to keep your family and your business, old friend.”

Gregor straightened his spine, finding the strength to hold his head higher. He could count on Sergei to speak to him like a man, not like a sickly child.

There was really only one thing to be done now—go to San Francisco. Maybe coming clean would feel good. He could unburden his soul in these last days. And surely, it was the only thing that would ever bring Dmitri back to Kiev to assume the helm of Lisko Enterprises.

If Gregor succeeded.

The voices were so close and so familiar. Sonya’s mother and father wailed.
“Kill him, and come be with us. Kill him.”

She shuddered, her response barely more than a sob. “I don’t know who he is yet. I’m trying.”

They kept at the mournful chant in the same loving voices that had sung her lullabies and chatted with her over breakfast every day for twenty-five years. She longed for them, for that idyllic life they’d shared. Their song was like a leash, pulling her toward them with a slow and powerful force. She wanted to give in to it, to follow wherever it led her, to see them again. Until she glanced at Dmitri.

In her mind, they’d only died yesterday, and her grief stung, fresh and raw. But in twenty-four hours with him, the full span of forty-five years dead passed through her, making her into someone new, someone she wanted the chance to be, if such a thing were possible.

The roar of the powerful cascade drowned out the voices of her parents, offering relief, a quiet moment alone in her mind. The water barreling down the fountain was a promise—of cleansing, of baptism. All her grief could be washed away, all her pain, her longing for her family, for a life, and for Dmitri.

She floated into the water, and it passed through her ghostly body, refreshing and cool—remaking her.

Opening her eyes, she stared through the rushing stream. The curtain of water lit up with eerie green light. More than loosey-goosey—she was nearly gone. No more Sonya, only anger, a pure furious consciousness. Exultant, she raised her hands into the torrent, a goddess, an avenger, a monster.

Find him, rip him to shreds.

She curled her fingers, raking through the water as if it were flesh. Blood and justice—the hunger shook her.

No, not just her. All around, people in the park bent their knees and flung out their arms, bracing against the tremor caused by her need. The ground rolled and quaked with the force of it. She extended her hand out from the stream of water, beckoning a young man in a suit. He tilted his head and scratched it once before he took a step toward her.